These are beautiful hex tiles, with clean lines.

They could really use a matching clean set with roads, rivers, coasts, forest edges, and so on. They don't blend in with messier sets with these things.

Action Stations! 4.2 is a redesign by Andrew Finch and Alan Butler of an older edition by David Manley.

I was looking for rules and data for amphibious landings during World War 1, the Ukrainian Civil Wars, and the Russian Civil Wars: Tanga, Gallipoli, Trabzond, Moon Sound, Taganrog, and others.

Action Stations! includes rules for light naval combat during World Wars 1 and 2. It includes data for a wide range of World War 2 craft, a few World War 1 craft, and some light coastal ordnance. It does not yet include rules for amphibious landings, or the X-lighter, Bolinder, or Elpidifor-class landing craft.

Action Stations! does not include any scenarios, either.

I don't feel I can judge the game as the designers intended it, so I'm giving it a default 3 stars. But I hope this can help other people considering the game.

Ships are rated for:

1. Class, 2 values, indicating size and manueverability.

2. Hull Boxes, indicating sturdiness. This value appears to use a construction quality value x the square root of the full displacement. This value also appears compatible with the Steamer Wars trilogy, also by David Manley.

3. Speed, 4 values, in knots.

4. Weapons, including info on firing arcs and armor for each weapon.

5. Notes.

Quest for Dragon Spire is supposed to be an introductory adventure for new players and new gamemasters.

It has an interesting story, which should work for new players.

But each scene is an improv prompt, which can be challenging for many gamemasters. I tried a pre-written adventure precisely because I have trouble with improv. I want to practice without too much improv to get better, then I can deal with more improv!

The climactic scene is the worst in this regard. As of the 2019 version, the adventure doesn't say enough about the dragon's motivations, and whether they have recently arrived, or returned, or perhaps awoken from a long sleep. This makes it hard for the gamemaster to judge whether the characters have reasonable requests and ideas to resolve the conflict. The adventure refers to a series of rolls, and taken literally, good diplomacy implies about a 13% chance of persuading the dragon, while poor diplomacy implies only a 4% chance. So what happens the other 87% or 96% of the time? It'd help to include suggestions for ideas that might make up for bad rolls, or quests that might persuade the dragon, which could be completed in time.

The river scene also gave me a lot of trouble.

For better gamemasters, the improv may not be too much.

I bought this book hoping to find resources for gamemasters who want to create societies for their campaigns. i.e. "kingdom building." I already have other historically-oriented resources, but game-oriented resources would be useful, even if they would require adaptation from Pathfinder to my preferred systems. The Book of the River Nations does not have anything like this.

I knew it had resources for ambitious players who want to conquer or administer them.

The Book of the River Nations assumes that the characters are exploring and colonizing empty lands. Without resources for gamemasters who want to create societies for their campaigns, or want to interpret a setting's existing societies for the campaigns, it is ill-suited to ambitious characters conquering or administering existing societies, or to adventures for other characters caught in the middle.

The population sizes and army sizes are both far too low for settled agricultural societies. When William the Bastard invaded England, he took an army of around 10,000 people, and conquered a land of around 1,000,000 people. In the game a colossal army has 2,000 people, and an area as large as England would have around 20,000 people in 132 hexes.

The rules don't account for differing climate, or differing crops, or for the advantages of irrigation in semi-desert, though it costs more to build towns in desert.

The rules don't account for trade routes to the mother country or through the new one.

I have to wonder what emptied these lands: have people never settled there? have people already settled, but been killed by invaders and new diseases?

Not a Brainware Supplement

Despite the title, Rache Bartmoss' Brainware Blowout is not a brainware supplement. It doesn't include any additional neuralware, or update or consolidate the original game's and earlier supplements' neuralware.

It is a netrunning-ware supplement. It includes a variety of cyberdecks, computers, cybernetics, and software for netrunning. It includes some additional cyberdecks, software, etc. which had appeared in the original Netrunner card game. It doesn't require the card game.

It also adds some non-player characters based on the Netrunner card game.

The cybernetics are far ahead of our time, while the computers aren't. There are direct neural links, and there are keyboards, so there are still options for people who can't use touchscreens.

One objection: The main text uses slurs.

Two bugs: Brainware Blowout won't display on older Kindles without either special software, such as Kual or Librerator, or extensive re-processing. Brainware Blowout doesn't have any text layer on some pages, or the sidebars of other pages, making it that much harder to search it on any devices or to convert it to epub.

I would give 3 stars to a hard copy, or a bug-free pdf, but only 2 to the buggy pdf.

"Whistlestop Guide to Herbs" is a guide to herbs from the British Isles, where they grow, and what they have been used to treat or mis-treat.

It isn't a medical reference, and doesn't discuss dosage, effectiveness, counterindications, etc. For example, for most people, mint, basil, etc. improve digestion, but for some people, they can worsen digestion and trigger vomiting.

It doesn't include rules for treating symptoms.

It should help roleplay treating symptoms, in pre-Industrial campaigns, especially in the British Isles or elsewhere in Northern Europe.

It doesn't help roleplay poisoning, or investigating poisonings, especially since it omits deadly nightshade and foxglove.

It would be nice to include more herbs, from more regions, and to include more information about rarity, taste, effects, and side-effects.

In Otherverse America, Chris A. Field describes a future where the culture wars have exploded into civil war, followed by tense cold war; meanwhile psionics, biotechnology, and cybertechnology have developed.

Otherverse America doesn’t explain everything about the setting. It seems to be aimed at superhero campaigns, rather than harder speculative-fiction campaigns. It often refers to lifechains, without explaining who they are.

Otherverse America includes supplemental rules for campaigns using d20 Modern. The supplemental rules rely on classes, levels, and feats, so it wouldn’t be practical to adapt them to d6 Adventure, Shadowrun, Twilight: 2000 II/Traveller: TNE, etc. I think Technology Unleashed includes supplemental rules for campaigns using either Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons, but I don’t know if they would allow people to play Otherverse America.

One big question: does this setting, does this future, have room for people like me? I am a Christian who values bodily autonomy, including reproductive rights. I am queer and autistic. I have chronic illness. I get incapacitated by loud noises and flashing lights, and can’t escape them. (Sometimes it can be nice to escape into another setting, and away from my chronic illness, while keeping the values and many of the attributes that make me myself.) I can’t find enough about whether these “Choicer” and “Lifer” societies use their technologies to accommodate us, or to eugenically and/or morally mandate us out of existence.

Food (and Metal) for Thought

In Farm, Force, and Steam, Phillip MacGregor emphasizes the continuous evolution of past pre-industrial societies, and the ecological and technological constraints on these societies, in order to show how they could affect hypothetical societies, especially fantasy ones. I would like to have seen more discussion of actual societies. While there's ongoing debate over Roman population, there something closer to consensus about late medieval and early modern population, town sizes, trade links, etc. I would also like to have seen notes on plausible town sizes and army sizes, since both are often exaggerated. I would also like to add that there were towns/cities, such as Cahokia, and civilization in the Mississippi plains before European contact.

If you're interested in the topic, I would suggest this book, and I would suggest looking at the works of Brian Fagan for a broad overview of anthropology, Marvin Harris if they are interested in another cultural materialist view, and perhaps either Walter Scheidel or Saskia Hin if they are interested in Roman population densities, population sizes, and life expectancies.